Undoing an Affiliate's Spam

How do I clean up after this?

[DylanW]

We've run an affiliate program through Mal's eCommerce for about a year or so, and we've had no problem until this weekend, when one of our affiliates decided to send out spam and submit our site to a number of FFA/Classified sites (using our email address, which means we get all the spam from it).

Among other things, this has resulted in the affiliate's account being deleted by Mal's (although he was apparently not notified, as he doesn't understand why he can't log in) and a "domain block" error message for some of our other affiliate links (I'm assuming this is connected to it.)

Now, I admit I didn't have a "don't spam" warning on our affiliate program, because up until now, it didn't seem to be a big issue (however, I put one up today). I figured either this wouldn't come up that much, or it wouldn't affect us as much as it has.

If anyone has experienced this problem before, any advice on what I should do would be appreciated. How do I check if we're on any spam block lists? What do I do if we are? Should we go ahead and give this guy the credit he's earned up until now?

[Dreamquick]

From a purely e-mail blacklist point-of-view you could try;

http;//www.spam-blockers.com/SPAM-blacklists.htm

which contains links to most of the blacklists I've heard of an a few I haven't - at the moment I think the spamcop blacklist is one of the best mostly down to the very open policy they have with regards to the how, what, when & why.

- Tony

[nativenewyorker]

DylanW asked:

Should we go ahead and give this guy the credit he's earned up until now?

Most affiliate programs have in their TOS that any spamming will result in a forfeit of any earned commissions. Given the trouble this has caused you and the damage in reputation, why would you want to pay them?

Ted

[DylanW]

That was sort of my line of thinking, but at the time he was angry (couldn't log in, and was so sure he was being ripped off by us or Mal's). My boss kept asking me whether we should just pay him to get him off our backs if we did owe him something.

The problem took care of itself. I haven't heard from him since I emailed him back with a quote from Mal's response to my email saying that one of our affiliates sent out spam.